A Louisiana police department has issued an apology for the “offensive” behavior of its officers — over 25 years after they wore blackface to go undercover during a narcotics operation.

The mea culpa from the Baton Rouge Police Department came Monday after a photo circulated showing two male officers in blackface and sunglasses, and one of them throwing up gang signs.

The photograph, which appeared in the Baton Rouge Police Department’s 1993 yearbook, identified the cops as “Soul brothers.”

“Blackface photographs are inappropriate and offensive,” police chief Murphy Paul said in a statement. “They were inappropriate then and are inappropriate today. The Baton Rouge Police Department would like to apologize to our citizens and to anyone who may have been offended by the photographs.”

Paul said the department is unable to “apply existing policies to conduct that happened before the policies were in place” while noting that the incident wouldn’t be tolerated in present day.

“Today, we would not allow our officers to wear blackface in an official capacity under any circumstances,” he said. “We have policies in place to prevent our officers from engaging in this type of behavior both on and off-duty.”